sound, he
is entitled to a pension of $12.

In the latter case, and under the proviso of the proposed bill
permitting persons now receiving pensions to be admitted to the benefits
of the act, I do not see how those now on the pension roll for
disabilities incurred in the service, and which diminish their earning
capacity, can be denied the pension provided in this bill.

Of course none will apply who are now receiving $12 or more per month.
But on the 30th day of June, 1886, there were on the pension rolls
202,621 persons who were receiving fifty-eight different rates of
pension from $1 to $11.75 per month. Of these, 28,142 were receiving $2
per month; 63,116, $4 per month; 37,254, $6 per month, and 50,274, whose
disabilities were rated as total, $8 per month.

As to the meaning of the section of the bill under consideration there
appears to have been quite a difference of opinion among its advocates
in the Congress. The chairman of the Committee on Pensions in the House
of Representatives, who reported the bill, declared that there was in it
no provision for pensioning anyone who has a less disability than a
total inability to labor, and that it was a charity measure. The
chairman of the Committee on Pensions in the Senate, having charge of
the bill in that body, dissented from the construction of the bill
announced in the House of Representatives, and declared that it not only
embraced all soldiers totally disabled, but, in his judgment, all who
are disabled to any considerable extent; and such a construction was
substantially given to the bill by another distinguished Senator, who,
as a former Secretary of the Interior, had imposed upon him the duty of
executing pension laws and determining their intent and meaning.

Another condition required of claimants under this act is that they
shall be "dependent upon their daily labor for support."

This language, which may be said to assume that there exists within the
reach of the persons mentioned "labor," or the ability in some degree to
work, is more aptly used in a statute describing those not wholly
deprived of this ability than in one which deals with those utterly
unable to work.

I am of the opinion that it may fairly be contended that under the
provisions of this section any soldier whose faculties of mind or body
have become impaired by accident, disease, or age, irrespective of his
service in the Army as a cause, and who by his labor only is left
incapabl